The Admiral of Hogwarts

Prestige was granted permission because she also represented the Ministry of Magic of the Balkans. Therefore, she was able to enter as an official foreign Ministry of Magic reporter.

However, in addition to her credentials, several major deals between the Balkan Ministry of Magic and the British Ministry of Magic recently played a significant role, leading Fudge to personally sign her interview permit.

When Prestige walked into the classroom, she found it was a smaller room. Most of the desks had been pushed to the back, leaving a large open space in the middle.

However, three desks were placed end-to-end in front of the blackboard, covered with a long velvet cloth.

Behind the velvet-covered desks were five chairs, one of which was occupied by Ludo Bagman, who was chatting with a witch who looked somewhat familiar to Prestige.

The witch was wearing a magenta robe, her hair styled into elaborate, stiff, and peculiar large curls. Her thick, fleshy fingers clutched a crocodile-skin handbag, and her fingernails were two inches long and painted bright red.

Clearly, such a getup was unique in the magical world, and coupled with her particular makeup, anyone entering the room would immediately recognize her.

Rita Skeeter, a journalist skilled at fabricating news. She could spin countless scandalous stories from your ordinary words, and the fabrication skills of her self-writing quill were even more impressive.

Because the monotonous life of the wizarding world was too dull, countless people were eager for this reporter to share her newly fabricated stories with them.

After seeing that everyone had arrived, Bagman began to announce what they were going to do.

"We must check that your wands are fully functional and in good condition, because in the upcoming competition events, the wand is your most important piece of equipment," he said.

"The experts are upstairs with Dumbledore. Then there will be some photos taken. This is Rita Skeeter," he said, pointing to the witch in the magenta robe, "She's writing a small article about the Triwizard Tournament for the Daily Prophet…"

A small article? Whether it was Prestige, Venetto, or Hugo on the Admiral Network, they all felt that Bagman was being overly optimistic. This was someone who could weave a best-selling novel of hundreds of thousands of words with various appealing elements from a single sentence.

Honestly, the fact that someone with such talent didn't imitate Lockhart and become a best-selling novelist, but insisted on being a reporter, only showed that Rita Skeeter truly loved this profession, although her way of loving it might be different from normal people.

Sure enough, Rita Skeeter then found Harry, who didn't know what was happening, and dragged him into the broom closet next door for a one-on-one interview.

After Rita Skeeter dragged Harry away and closed the door, Prestige shrugged and took out her interviewing equipment to interview the other three champions.

Of course, Prestige, aiming to build an authoritative media outlet, would not ask the kind of tabloid-style questions that Rita Skeeter did, nor would she fabricate the content of the interviews.

So, after a very brief interview with the cooperative Venetto, Fleur and Krum also successfully completed their interviews, accompanied by their respective headmasters.

"Alright, the interviews are over now, everyone please sit down," Ludo Bagman said to everyone after seeing that Prestige had finished her interviews. At that moment, Dumbledore came down from upstairs.

"Where's Harry?" Dumbledore, coming down from upstairs, glanced around the room and then asked Venetto.

"He was dragged away by that female reporter for an interview," Venetto replied, pointing to the door of the broom closet.

Upon hearing this, Dumbledore immediately took two quick steps forward and abruptly opened the door of the broom closet, looking down at Rita Skeeter and Harry.

"Dumbledore!" Rita Skeeter reacted immediately and said loudly, looking delighted—

"How are you?" she said, standing up and extending a manly hand to Dumbledore. "I wonder if you saw my article about the International Confederation of Wizards conference this summer?"

"It was absolutely wonderful," Dumbledore said, his eyes shining brightly, "I especially loved the part where you portrayed me as a senile old fool."

"Professor Dumbledore, you really know how to have fun." Hugo, who saw this scene through the Admiral Network, looked out the window silently at this moment.

However, Dumbledore's retort was useless against someone with Rita Skeeter's particularly thick skin. She said very naturally, "I just wanted to point out that some of your views are a bit outdated, Dumbledore, many wizards outside—"

"I would be very happy to hear your frank reasoning, Rita," Dumbledore said with a slight smile, bowing politely.

"But I'm afraid we'll have to discuss this matter later. The wand weighing ceremony is about to begin, and if we continue to dawdle, the ceremony will not be able to proceed."

Harry, looking thoroughly annoyed with the reporter, quickly took the opportunity to sit in the chair next to Venetto.

After that came the wand inspection. Each champion, after handing over their wand, would undergo meticulous testing. Then, Mr. Ollivander would describe its current general condition and function, and declare that it was in good condition and fully capable of withstanding the upcoming trials.

During this inspection, Mr. Ollivander intentionally or unintentionally highlighted the advantages of his own creations, and expressed some opinions on wands made by other craftsmen.

Naturally, in these evaluations, Ollivander pointed out the differences between himself and other wandmakers. Of course, there would be a little bit of self-promotion in this comparison.

But honestly, the skill levels of the three great European wandmakers were similar, only with different focuses.

Unlike Ollivander, who advocated the theory of the wand choosing the wizard, Gregorovitch allowed customers to choose their own materials, even bringing some to be used in the wand's manufacture, and was a staunch supporter of the idea that the person chooses the wand.

From a large number of practical examples, except for a very few wands that did not cooperate well with the wizard, most wands, after a long period of use and some fine-tuning, could meet the needs of the user.

However, this was only the difference between different schools of mass-produced wand masters. For some wealthy and hereditary pure-blood wizards, inviting a wandmaker to come to their home for custom measurements was the most common practice.

This was why Miss Delacour's wand received a higher evaluation from Ollivander than Krum's, because the wandmakers who could be invited by those pure-bloods were generally of a high level.

After the wand inspection, it was time for the photographer who came with Rita Skeeter to take pictures, after all, the front page of tomorrow's newspaper needed to have a photo.

Taking the group photo took a relatively long time because Madame Maxime was too tall and the room was too small. So after adjusting for a long time, she finally had to sit down to take pictures with everyone.

At the same time, the photographer always wanted to put Fleur in the front, while Rita was particularly fond of Harry, and repeatedly ran to pull Harry to the center position.

And the individual photos after the group photo also consumed a lot of time, especially the time spent on Harry, which was three times that of others. So in the end, the people in the room didn't finish these things and leave until very late.